Council Members Had Voted In 2005 To Permit Medical Marijuana Dispensaries To Comply With The State Law. HUNTINGTON BEACH Medical marijuana dispensaries are no longer legally allowed in Surf City after council members voted Monday to adopt an ordinance that essentially bans them from opening. Surf City joined the increasing number of cities in Southern California that prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries after council members voted 5 to 2 to change the ordinance, after one person spoke against the ban. Councilwomen Debbie Cook and Jill Hardy voted against the ban. [continues 323 words]
After the countless, monotonous lectures and educational pamphlets I've received over the years, I like to think of myself as pretty well-informed when it comes to illegal drugs. I've heard all about the effects of cocaine, marijuana, LSD, methane and speed. I know grades drop, concentration diminishes and relationships suffer. I even have a brief notion of how some of these drugs work at the neuronal synapse level. In other words, I know how drugs would affect me if I chose to take them. This is the goal of the bulk of education about illegal drugs, especially in high school. Adults (parents in particular) want kids to know how horrid life will become for the addict if they begin consuming. The information people receive about drugs mainly concentrates on the effects on the individual. [continues 377 words]
Editor's note: The following is a letter written by Jean Marlowe in support of Steve Marlowe, who was arrested on marijuana charges last Tuesday. To the Editor: I am writing on behalf of Steve Marlowe. I am one of the patients for which Steve grows cannabis. The other patient is an MS patient who is bedridden and cannot come to court, but his mother and his specialist will be in court to testify to the jury. I find it quite strange that the "reliable informant" the sheriff's department used will cost the taxpayers of this county thousands of dollars to settle the potential lawsuits from the unnecessary destruction to Mr. Bailey's private property, the trauma to his family and the abuse to Mr. McAbee, who was hit with a gun, knocked out and had to spend the night in the hospital, courtesy of taxpayers. [continues 636 words]
Editor, The News; On the evening of Nov. 14, I attended a forum? debate? sales meeting? at the Matsqui Centennial Auditorium. To me it appears that the session was a "high pressure" sales pitch presented by the Pro-legalization Drug Lobby (LEAP). I am sure that this high powered presentation would receive a glowing report from the "sales manager" of the Pro-drug Lobby. Presenting the pro-legalization (LEAP) side were two lawyers and a retired Vancouver police officer. It appears to me that to try to have a perceived balanced presentation the fourth member of the panel was an Abbotsford police inspector. I feel that he was blindsided by the sales format which was advertised as a debate. There was so much mis-information presented by the LEAP sale team that it is impossible to cover them all in one letter, so I will try to cover one. [continues 264 words]
Ex-Grow-Op Rented Without Disclosure, Tenant Alleges It was a dream home and a fresh start for Steve Flood - until the neighbours told him what had happened there, and his son got sick. Shortly after the Flood family moved into 1652 Chornoby Cresc. in Tecumseh, under a lease-to-own agreement, the neighbours told them the house was once a marijuana grow operation. They shrugged it off at first. But they started noticing mould in vents and on walls and ceilings. There were electrical problems. Baseboards buckled out from the walls, there were cracks in the drywall and the ceiling had bubbled, apparently from the moisture created in a grow operation. [continues 709 words]
Last week's seizure of a Hells Angels clubhouse in Nanaimo is a welcome sign the province is acting on its much-ballyhooed B.C. Civil Forfeiture Act, passed last year to give the government the power to seize cash, property and assets of those who derive income from illegal activity, including drug trafficking. But it also highlights how complacent we in B.C. are about the criminal effects of "B.C. bud." We joke about how it's hard to commit a crime when you're on the couch eating chips, but the reality is that marijuana trafficking is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry, fuelling gangs and their associated violence. [continues 300 words]
Washington, D.C. - Congressman Pete Visclosky announced that legislation signed into law by the President includes $800,000 for anti-drug programs in Northwest Indiana. As part of his efforts to fight and prevent crime in Northwest Indiana, Visclosky secured the funding for Indiana National Guard's Drug Demand Reduction Program, which will provide support to several drug-prevention programs for area students in Northwest Indiana. "The Drug Demand Reduction Program offers educational programs to prevent Northwest Indiana students from using drugs, which is a critical first step in reducing drug use and crime in our area," said Visclosky. "This funding is a much-needed investment in our community, our children, and our quality of life." [continues 179 words]
I'm writing about: "Bend man attempts armed break-in to collect drug debt" (11-12-07). When was the last time The Bend Weekly had a front page story about someone attempting to break-in a home to collect a liquor debt? Probably about 1933, the year we ended the disaster known as Alcohol Prohibition. Alcohol prohibition was not terminated because it was decided that alcohol was not so bad after all. But rather because of the crime and corruption that its prohibition created. When alcohol prohibition was terminated in 1933, our overall crime rate declined dramatically and our murder rate declined for 10 consecutive years. Have we learned any lessons from this? Not yet. Kirk Muse Mesa, AZ [end]
Emerald Cross, a cannabis club run by a Port Orchard woman, is closed and its future uncertain after the organization lost its lease. The club, which dispensed marijuana as medicine to people with physician authorizations, occupied a building in an industrial neighborhood of Seattle. Director Sue Watson located the dispensary in Seattle because she was told by the Kitsap County Prosecutor's Office that the operation would not be tolerated here. Seattle is, by reputation and law, more accepting of medical marijuana use. Voters there in 2003 passed a measure that makes arresting and prosecuting individuals with less than 40 grams of marijuana the "lowest law enforcement priority." [continues 300 words]
The Post's news story about the ban on farmers growing hemp -- a useful product that has no psychoactive properties -- illustrates how irrational U.S. drug policy has become ["Farmers Ask Federal Court to Dissociate Hemp and Pot," Nov. 12]. But I was also struck by the fact that the same section of The Post had more than two full pages of ads for alcohol -- a drug far more dangerous than marijuana. For example, in March the Lancet, the British medical journal, ranked alcohol as the fifth most dangerous recreational drug out of 20 cited, while marijuana was ranked only 11th (and tobacco, incidentally, ranked ninth). Richard F. Kennedy Lorton [end]
An interview with the paraplegic man sentenced to 25 years in prison for treating his own pain. In October of this year, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed a pardon for Richard Paey, a paraplegic with multiple sclerosis who had served nearly four years of a 25-year prison sentence for drug trafficking. Paey, who requires high-dose opioid therapy to treat pain brought on by his MS, a car accident, and a botched back surgery, was convicted of trafficking despite concessions from prosecutors that there was no evidence the painkillers in his possession were for anything other than his own use. When police came to arrest the wheel-chair bound Paey, they came with a full-on SWAT team, battering down the door and rushing into the home of the wheelchair-bound Paey, his optometrist wife, and their two schoolage children. [continues 2968 words]
